The Red Hunter(17)

“My goodness,” said his mother. She clutched at her nightgown and reached for him as he walked out into the hallway. “What in the world was that?”

He’d stayed behind with her, the storm raging outside. From the window, they could see how the branch had fallen, hanging by splinters still, the bottom of it piercing the gabled roof of the workshop. Josh marveled. Such solid things . . . the old oak, the barn turned workshop, things that seemed so fixed in the world, immutable—fallen, smashed. His father was swearing downstairs; his mother had Josh wrapped up tight. He would always rather be with her than with them.

He ran his hand along the surface of the table. In the grains of the wood he always thought he could see the old man’s face, pulled long in disappointment the way it often was in life. The table, like everything his father made, was as solid as it was the day they carried it into the kitchen. Josh ran his hand along the perfectly straight edge. Measure twice, cut once.

Josh was aware of that notch in his throat that he always seemed to get when Rhett was around. His brother was a loaded gun waved in the air, a storm gathering in the distance. You just didn’t know what was going to happen. Maybe nothing. Maybe something awful.

“The truth is,” his brother said, pushing at his eggs. “I need work.”

Josh felt a dump of dread and resentment in his middle, rubbed at his eyes with a calloused thumb and forefinger so that Rhett wouldn’t see it on his face. He heard the television come on upstairs, the dripping of water from the leaky kitchen sink faucet. He’d redone the counters and resurfaced the cabinets last year, but the kitchen with its old four-paned window and fading floral wallpaper needed an overhaul.

“I don’t have any place else to go,” his brother went on when Josh didn’t say anything.

“More trouble?”

“Some,” said Rhett with a shrug. He shoved the eggs into his mouth like he hadn’t eaten in a week.

“Is it going to follow you here?”

Rhett offered a vigorous shake of his head. “No,” he said. “Course not. I wouldn’t do that to Ma.”

Josh nodded.

“Who’s going to hire me?” asked Rhett, locking Josh’s gaze.

Right. Who was going to hire an ex-con who went to prison for being part of an armed robbery, which wasn’t nearly as bad as other things for which he’d never been caught? Who was lazy and shifty and looked like a thug, to boot?

It took Josh a long time to understand what his brother was, and what he himself became when his brother was around. Josh took a sip of his coffee. The back door stood open, and the October air was still warm, smelling like the last stand of Indian summer, the last moment of green before brown, the last lingering of long days before short.

“There’s not a lot of work right now,” said Josh.

Rhett polished off the rest of his meal, rubbing crumbs out of his thick, dark goatee. He leaned back, ran big hands through the mass of his black hair. Sideburns made twin Ls along his jawline. It was a look.

“Ma said you might have a regular gig,” said Rhett. “Handyman on some rich lady’s restoration project.”

Josh had left them to talk last night. He shouldn’t have.

“I haven’t been hired.”

Rhett dropped his gaze on Josh, and Josh tried not to shrink from it.

“You’re still so pretty, little brother.” Funny how an innocent word like that could be a razor blade, could slice painful and small, going so deep, so fast as to draw blood. “I bet if you tried hard enough, you could get that girl to hire you.”

“She’s not looking for a date,” said Josh. “She’s looking for a handyman.”

Rhett cocked his head to the side, cracking his neck, squinting. “Dad always wanted us to work together. That was his dream, that we’d take over his business.”

Josh let out a little snort. “Dad had a lot of dreams that didn’t work out.”

“Thanks to me?” said Rhett. His voice as cool and flat as a blade. “Is that what you were going to say?”

“Don’t start.”

He hadn’t seen his brother in five years, and yet it might have been yesterday that they were boys fighting over everything from friends, to video games, to comic books, to girls. Their life together had been one long wrestling match. And yet. And yet. Beneath that antipathy ran a current of laughter, of affection. Even now. Even after everything and so much time passed. There were things they understood about each other, things no one else could see.

Josh cleared the plates, loaded them into the dishwasher feeling his brother’s eyes boring hot and mean into the back of his neck.

“You were there, too,” said Rhett. His voice was just a whisper. “Let’s not forget that. I protected you, took care of you.”

Josh shook his head but kept silent. That was really not how it went down. Not even close.

“I’ve changed,” Rhett said as Josh washed his hands, dried them on the worn dish towel. In the window over the metal sink, Josh could see his brother’s faint, ghostly reflection; he looked slouched and old, beaten. But if that’s what Josh was seeing in him, that’s what Rhett wanted him to see. All psychopaths were skilled manipulators. Words were the least of their tricks.

“I know you don’t believe it,” Rhett went on. “But I have.”